Microsoft’s Research on Autonomous Cars

Research for autonomous cars will be now conducted with the help of Microsoft’s artificial intelligence simulator. It was recently announced that Microsoft’s Airsim system will be used for testing the safety of vehicle artificial intelligence systems.With the help of the new AirSim, now we can get realistic environments, vehicle dynamics, and research on how AI-based autonomous vehicles can operate safely.

Applications and Integration

Earlier this year, Microsoft open-sourced AirSim for testing the safety of artificial intelligence systems. Microsoft’s AirSim (Aerial Informatics and Robotics) is an open source artificial intelligence simulator. The origins of the technology were for the game development tool suite.Now the technology has been expanded to provide realistic environment simulations that enable research into how autonomous vehicles will behave and operate in the open world.

The updated version of AirSim also includes additional tools for testing airborne vehicles. It is easier for people to simulate flying drones by adding a built-in flight controller, called simple_flight, that simplifies the setup process.

The new version of AirSim includes car simulations, the simulation contains more than 12 km of drivable roads spanning more than 20 city blocks; new environments, APIs to ease programming and ready-to-run scripts to start your research.

AirSim comes with a detailed 3D urban environment that includes a variety of diverse conditions, including traffic lights, parks, lakes, and construction sites.It can be used in different languages, which means it can be used in conjunction with different machine learning tools.

Microsoft plans to expand AirSim further with different sensors, better vehicle physics, weather modelling, and more additional realistic environments. Users can test their systems in several types of neighbourhoods, including downtown, semi-urban, vegetation and industrial environments.